More than half of the 27 journalists imprisoned in China are ethnic Tibetan or Uyghur, says the Committee to Protect Journalist (CPJ) in a report posted on its website. more ›

This notice put up by the Huayuan Road Public Security Bureau in Beijing's Haidian district requests owners of hotels and bathhouses in the neighbourhood to ensure that all Tibetan and Uyghur guests are reported to them. Business owners are also to ensure thorough identification and verification of the ethnicity of all guests, according to the notice. more ›

Jennifer Gonnerman of New York magazine has a riveting account of the life and death of Private Danny Chen, a 19-year-old Chinese-American soldier who was found with a gunshot to his head in Afghanistan. The gunshot, as it turned out, was not inflicted by armed Afghan rebels, but by Chen himself. The abuse that he had to put up from his platoon mates for being the only Asian guy around was too much to bear. more ›

Behold, new frontiers are being crossed in the grand tradition of going native! A wedding took place yesterday between a 'high-nosed deep-eyed' Californian and a Kaifeng native in Kaifeng, Henan. The couple, who live and work in Shanghai, pulled out all the stops with a traditional Chinese wedding in the girl's hometown. more ›

Zhang Lijia, author of the book Socialism is Great, offers us a personal anecdote on the identity of her mixed-race kids. She writes of a recent trip to Bangladesh with her daughters:

Everywhere we went, people asked us which country we were from. At point, May, my older daughter, aged at 14 (but going on 18) replied without thinking: “We are from England.” I immediately contracted her: “I am from China and my daughters are half-Chinese.” Later I pulled May aside and asked: “You were born in China; you spent 10 out of 14 years in China and you are living in China. How does it qualify you as ‘English’?” May blinked her big round eyes. “Well, if I tell people I am Chinese, people wouldn’t believe me.” more ›

Josh Summers of FarWestChina follows up on our story of Alimjan Yimit, the imprisoned Uyghur Christian pastor of an underground church, and tells us a little about the Uyghur people and Christianity in Xinjiang:

Many people don’t realize that there are government-approved Christian churches in Xinjiang’s capital of Urumqi. I have personally been inside and sat in on a couple services. According to Chinese law, the government is supposed to supply registered religious organizations with a plot of land and a building in which to meet. Key word: registered. more ›

Yesterday was my first time to Shenyang city. And it was the first time I was so “warmly” welcomed by Shenyang people that I almost slept on the street last night. more ›

Watch out ladies, Chinese men are on the prowl. According to this article in Mop, one Chinese man set out to settle a score against Western men, by staking out Western women visiting Beijing during the Olympics. The man in question is from a small town in the middle of nowhere, the kind of place where "in 20 years only one student made it into Tsinghua or Peking University." He managed to test into a technical college and now works in Beijing. His friend relates the story and the motive [in translation], more ›